Banking restrictions

There seems to be internet problems going on. Is this connected to Planet X? [and from another]http://money.cnn.com/2014/01/26/news/world/uk-lloyds-atm-outage/ind... A Lloyds Banking Group spokeswoman said the three-hour outage had been resolved. A technical problem left customers at the U.K.'s largest bank unable to make purchases or withdrawals using their payment cards. [and from another]http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-25861717 Some HSBC customers have been prevented from withdrawing large amounts of cash because they could not provide evidence of why they wanted it. [and from another]http://iacknowledge.net/breaking-hsbc-bank-and-china-out-of-cash-ch... The People’s Bank of China, the central bank, has just ordered commercial banks to halt cash transfers. In short, there will be a three-day suspension of domestic renminbi transfers. There will also be a suspension, spanning nine calendar days, of conversions of renminbi to foreign currency. The specific reason given—“system maintenance” at the central bank—is preposterous. It is not credible that during the highest usage period in the year—the weeklong Lunar New Year holiday beginning January 31—the central bank would schedule an upgrade and shut down cash transfers. [and from another]http://en.ria.ru/business/20140127/186966541/Russias-Central-Bank-B... Russia’s top monetary authority slammed digital currencies, warning that Bitcoin use can lead to criminal charges in the country. The anonymously produced “virtual currencies” can be intended by its producers for money laundering and terrorism funding purposes, the Central Bank said in a statement. This means that Russian digital currency users can become involved in criminal activity simply by using the Bitcoin and its analogues.

Suddenly banks are tightening the rules and the reins, all in the weeks ahead of the anticipated announcement admitting that Nibiru exists and is nearby. Is there a relationship? We predicted that banks would limit their hours, limit their withdrawals, and even be closed temporarily if a panic ensued. The likely time when such steps would be viewed as necessary would be during the announcement and shortly thereafter. One of the first reactions in a populace taken by surprise by the announcement would be to stock up on food, gasoline, and cash. The banks are anticipating a run on their ready cash, which frankly is not in hand!

The complicated world of paper money is such that banks are not required to hold what is technically owned to depositors in the form of cash. It is, therefore, technically impossible for a bank to payout savings to depositors, on demand. This likewise guts their standing, as to issue loans they have to have backing for the loans, and savings is one of the pillars their house of cards stands upon. For both those reasons, a run on a bank, whereby depositors try to pull out their savings, would be sharply limited during a panic. The steps taken by banks in the UK and and elsewhere are only part of the picture, as most limitations already in place have not yet hit the media.

Is this a sign of trouble ahead for the banking industry?

WASHINGTON (INTELLIHUB) — Just over 2 decades ago banker George Soros made his most famous investment by shorting the British pound and pocketing a billion dollars in the process. Since then he has become famous for betting on stock market crashes and in some cases even rigging markets to fail for his own gain.

Just months ago, Soros made headlines by making a billion dollar stock bet against the S&P 500. At the time this was said to be a sign of trouble ahead for the US economy, as Soros has seemed to have had advance knowledge of market crashes in the past. As a result of this reputation, investors have begun to keep a close eye on his holdings.

This week investors took notice again when Soros sold his shares of three major American banks, including Bank of America, JP Morgan and Citigroup.

In February 2009, Soros said the world financial system had effectively disintegrated, adding that there was no prospect of a near-term resolution to the crisis. “We witnessed the collapse of the financial system … It was placed on life support, and it’s still on life support. There’s no sign that we are anywhere near a bottom.”

Psychological help after the suicide of an employee

An employee of the Bred- Banque Populaire jumped from the 14th floor of the bank's headquarters on Tuesday morning, quai de la Rapee to Paris .This 52 year old woman was affected in Créteil (Val-de-Marne) since November.The incident occurred shortly before 10 am, 200 meters from the Ministry of Finance.Psychological cell was opened on Tuesday to assist employees in shock.

Some attended the scene.An investigation police began Wednesday, as well as that of the Health Committee (HSC) of the company.

"For the moment, nothing puts the company in question, says the majority union SUNI-Bred/UNSA.The employee got along very well with his new team, her superior is very nice. "According to a close," Lydia lived alone, in a difficult environment. "The human resources department states that this inhabitant of Ivry was therapeutic half for several years.Each describes a "secret" "very well known and popular" woman, but "never spoke of it."A homage will be Tuesday, April 29, at the sites of Créteil and Paris.They employ respectively 1100 and 350 employees.

A series of mysterious apparent suicides by Chinese officials in the past three weeks, including of two senior figures, has sparked debate and questions among ordinary people here, as well as a fresh round of online censorship.

Chinese media reported Thursday that 58-year-old Xu Yean, a deputy director in the State Bureau for Letters and Calls, was found hanged in his office earlier in the week.

Xu’s department handles the petitions and complaints of ordinary citizens against local government officials. Although Xu had not been publicly linked with any corruption investigation, a senior colleague was fired and placed under investigation last November for a “severe violation” of party discipline.

He Gaobo, a local official responsible for building safety in the city of Fenghua in the eastern province of Zhejiang, was found dead in another suspected suicide Wednesday, five days after an apartment building collapsed in the city.

Last Friday, senior policeman Zhou Yu was found hanged in a hotel room in the central Chinese city of Chongqing. Zhou had been a major figure in a crackdown on organized crime in the city under the leadership of Bo Xilai, a senior Communist Party leader who was imprisoned for corruption.

A senior official at state-owned power generation company Datang was also reported to have died in suspicious circumstances March 29, although the company denied it was suicide.

But perhaps the most sensational death of all was that of Li Wufeng, a 56-year-old known as China’s top Internet cop, who was reportedly involved in maintaining a system of online censorship known as the Great Firewall of China. He was said to have jumped to his death from the sixth floor of his office building March 24.

China’s Central Propaganda Department swiftly issued a directive ordering local media not to report on his “accidental death” without authorization and to delete any “speculative and accusatory comments” online, according to a Web site, the China Digital Times, that monitors such directives.

Similar, the story of Xu Yean’s death Thursday was deleted from Chinese media Web site Caixin after a few hours.

Some netizens mocked official boilerplate explanations for many of these deaths.

“A new rule for officials who have committed suicide: every single one must be depressed, every single one must be unhealthy,” one user posted on Sina Weibo microblogging site.

Former ABN Amro Group NV Netherlands Chief Executive Officer Jan Peter Schmittmann, his wife and a daughter were found dead at their home yesterday after a possible “family tragedy,” Dutch police said.

“The bodies of a father and mother and their daughter were found at the property” in the town of Laren, 32 kilometers (20 miles) southeast of Amsterdam, Dutch police said in a statement on theirwebsite. Leonie Bosselaar, a police spokeswoman, said in a telephone call with Bloomberg Newsthat the deceased were Schmittmann and two family members.

The police received a call around 10:30 a.m. local time from a family acquaintance who said something may be wrong at the property, according to the statement. Bosselaar declined to comment further.

The Dutch newspaper AD reported, without citing anyone, that the family was discovered by Schmittmann’s second daughter when she arrived home yesterday morning. She was scheduled to travel to India with her parents, where she had an internship lined up, the newspaper said.

Schmittmann, 57, joined ABN Amro in 1983 as assistant relationship manager and was named head of the lender’s Dutch unit in 2003. He stepped down from the Amsterdam-based bank in December 2008, after the company was nationalized earlier that year.

In the latest of a series of fatal falls, a 33-year-old J.P. Morgan employee leapt from the roof of J.P. Morgan’s Hong Kong headquarters on Tuesday, above, plunging thirty stories to his death.

The employee’s role at the bank was unknown. Witnesses say police tried to stop the man from jumping to no avail. The employee’s death is just the latest in a string of seeming suicides that have wreaked havoc in the moneyed class over the past months.

On Jan. 26, a former Deutsche Bank and Merrill Lynch executive with close ties to the co-chief executive of Deutsche Bank was found dead in London after police received reports of a man found hanging in his house. On Jan. 27, a senior manager at J.P. Morgan’s European headquarters plunged to his demise from the bank’s headquarters in the same city. And several days later, in Washington state, the chief economist for Russell Investments fell down a 50-foot embankment and died.

Police categorized all three deaths as non-suspicious. The Russell Investments economist was reported to be having “problems at work;” the J.P. Morgan executive landed on an adjacent roof and could be seen from the office kitchen (a building employee said other staffers “avoid[ed] entering the room as a result,” even though the body wasn’t removed until four hours later), and the former Deutsche Bank exec was passed over to become chief risk officer for his company in 2012.

But that’s not all.

- Two weeks ago, Richard Talley, 57, the founder of American Title Services, was found dead with up to eight wounds to the torso and head after apparently shooting himself with a nail gun.

- Last Thursday, 37-year-old JP Morgan executive director of equities Ryan Henry Crane died in his Stamford, Connecticut home. No reason was given; the cause of death will be formalized when a toxicology report is released in six weeks.

- And also in January, U.K.-based communications director at Swiss Re AG, Tim Dickenson, was found dead; the circumstances surrounding his death remain unknown.

There’s also the matter of a missing commodities journalist.

Police have yet to find any trace of David Bird, 55, a 20-year veteran of the Wall Street Journal who covered commodities markets and was last seen leaving his New Jersey home Jan. 11. Reports the Journal:

The Long Hill police department, which is leading the effort, had three searchers out Friday… The Federal Bureau of Investigation is assisting as needed, a bureau spokeswoman said.

Mr. Bird was putting away Christmas decorations with his wife, Nancy, when he put on his red rain jacket and said he wanted to take a quick walk before an expected rainstorm. He left the house at 4:30 p.m.

He didn’t take his phone or the twice-daily medication he needs as a liver-transplant recipient. The couple has two children, ages 12 and 15.

But today in Hong Kong, coworkers say the 33-year-old man who leapt to his death Tuesday had complained about being under “heavy work-related stress.” No suicide note was found.

Another banker suicide, making it 4 in one week. The same day William Broeksmit was found hanged in the UK on January 26, India's Tata Motors managing director Karl Slym was found dead on the fourth floor of the Shangri-La hotel in Bangkok. Police said he could have committed suicide.

Financial World Shaken by 4 Bankers' Apparent Suicides in One Week (Feb 3)